during the Battle of Mount Austen
in World War II
. It portrays men in: C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division; in particular those soldiers played by Sean Penn
, Jim Caviezel
, Nick Nolte
, Elias Koteas
and Ben Chaplin
. The title echoes Rudyard Kipling's
calling foot soldiers "the thin red line of 'eroes" in his poem Tommy
from Barrack-Room Ballads
.
The film marked director Terrence Malick
's return to filmmaking after a 20-year absence.
One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there's nothing but unanswered pain. That death's got the final word, it's laughing at him. Another man sees that same bird, feels the glory, feels something smiling through it.
voice over We were a family. How'd it break up and come apart, so that now we're turned against each other? Each standing in the other's light. How'd we lose that good that was given us? Let it slip away. Scattered it, careless. What's keepin' us from reaching out, touching the glory?
voice over This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?
In this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one.
Where's your spark now?
I might be the best friend you ever had, you don't even know it.
What difference do you think you can make, one single man in all this madness? If you die, it's gonna be for nothing. There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay. There's just this world. Just this rock.
Property. The whole fucking thing's about property.
Everything's a lie. Everything you hear, everything you see. So much to spew out. They just keep coming, one after another. You're in a box. A moving box. They want you dead, or in their lie... There's only one thing a man can do - find something that's his, and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack; a glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours.